The Gorge filmmakers Scott Derrickson, Maggie Levin to adapt Clay McLeod Chapman’s horror novel Ghost Eaters

Sinister and The Black Phone filmmaker Scott Derrickson will keep it all in the family for his next film project, as he partners with his equally gifted wife, Maggie Levin (Into the Dark, Heel, The Friendless Five), for an adaptation of Clay McLeod Chapman’s horror novel Ghost Eaters. Derrickson’s Crooked Highway studio recently picked up the rights to the bestseller, with Levin directing and writing the adaptation.

The plot for Ghost Eaters gives me Flatliners vibes. It focuses on a group of friends who discover a drug called Ghost, which allows them to see the dead. Unfortunately, Ghost has disturbing side effects. Once you take it, you can never go back.

Here’s a lengthier description of Chapman’s novel, courtesy of Amazon:

Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with her charismatic but reckless college ex-boyfriend, Silas. When he asks her to bail him out of rehab—again—she knows she needs to cut him off. But days after he gets out, Silas turns up dead of an overdose in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and Erin’s world falls apart.

Then a friend tells her about Ghost, a new drug that allows users to see the dead. Wanna get haunted? he asks. Grieving and desperate for closure with Silas, Erin agrees to a pill-popping “séance.” But the drug has unfathomable side effects—and once you take it, you can never go back.

Chapman has earned Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award nominations for such horror novels as Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, What Kind of Mother, and Whisper Down the Lane, making Ghost Eaters even more enticing.

Maggie Levin recently worked as a second unit director on Derrickson’s Apple TV+ suspense horror film The Gorge, which stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy. The film focuses on two operatives who are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a classified gorge. As the couple grows closer, they uncover an unimaginable evil lurking at the divide’s bottom, and it wants out.

I’m a sucker for a good horror novel, and I’ve already purchased a copy of Ghost Eaters as I’m writing this article. Are you excited for Scott Derrickson and Maggie Levin to team up for Ghost Eaters? Let us know in the comments section below.

Meanwhile, Derrickson’s latest feature, The Black Phone 2, opens in theaters on October 17, 2025.

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